The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

THE SECRET WITNESS.

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want of some indulgences, but she reserved to herself
the liberty of complaining, and to subdue this spirit in
her was found utterly impracticable. She died a victim
to discontent.
This event deepened the gloom that shrouded the soul
of her father, and rendered the task of consolation still
more difficult. She did not despair. Her sweetness and
patience were invincible by any thing that had already
happened, but her fortitude did not exceed the standard
of human nature. Evils now began to menace her, to
which it is likely she would have yielded, had not their
approach been intercepted by an evil of a different kind.
The pressure of grief is sometimes such as to prompt
us to seek a refuge in voluntary death. We must lay
aside the burden which we cannot sustain. If thought
degenerate into a vehicle of pain, what remains but to
destroy that vehicle? For this end, death is the obvious,
but not the only, or, morally speaking, the worst, means.
There is one method of obtaining the bliss of forgetfulness, in comparison with which suicide is innocent.
The strongest mind is swayed by circumstances. There
is no firmness of integrity, perhaps, able to repel every
species of temptation which is produced by the present
constitution of human affairs; and yet temptation is successful chiefly by virtue of its gradual and invisible approaches. We rush into danger, because we are not
aware of its existence, and have not therefore provided
the means of safety, and the demon that seizes us is
hourly reinforced by habit. Our opposition grows fainter
in proportion as our adversary acquires new strength,
and the man becomes enslaved by the most sordid vices,
whose fall would, at a former period, have been deemed
impossible, or who would have been imagined liable to
any species of depravity more than to this.
Mr. Dudley's education had entailed upon him many
errors; yet who would have supposed it possible for him
to be enslaved by a depraved appetite, to be enamoured
of low debauchery, and to grasp at the happiness that
intoxication had to bestow? This was a mournful period
in Constantia's history. My feelings will not suffer me
to dwell upon it. I cannot describe the manner in which
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